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Every book release is a special event, but this one is particularly so.

This novel started as a screenplay, written in the early 90’s. Predating CGI-based special effects, I’d been told the movie would be too expensive to produce. So I filed it away, in my box of Lost Hopes and Dreams.

Time passed. Lots of time. Years and years. The urge to write resurfaced, never truly defeated by life or work or circumstance (or child birthing). I found the original notes in the basement, packed away in a bankers’ box, the manila file folder titled Vampires in Space. It was a solid outline, complete with the design of the space station.

I’d been meaning to re-write that screenplay into a novel…but the script felt worn, redundant; tired. So I wrote Inner Demons instead, and gave it to my niece to test-read. She devoured it, asking for another book in the series based around Nigel.

Naturally, I thought of Vampires in Space.

First hatched in Inner Demons where Nigel had a supporting role, his was a character I particularly enjoyed. The Inner Demons concept breathed new life into the story. I kept the framework, re-wrote the details, hammered away at the craft of story-telling…and thus Synchronicity was re-born.

Physics hasn’t changed much in the last several decades – you still stick to the same side of a rotating wheel, and yes, I fact-checked that detail with a physicist friend (one of the weird topics we discussed during break). Certain scenes – like the ones featuring the observation tower – felt like coming home. A blend of everything I enjoy: vampires, sci-fi, coffee, and scotch.

This post makes it all seem easy – but it wasn’t. Nothing worthwhile ever is. It took years before its final shape emerged. But the journey was amazing.

Here are some of the novel’s influences: monsters spawned from the wellspring of 70’s sci-fi and shaped by the 80’s craze for vampires.

(hey, I said they were influences, I didn’t say they were awesome examples)

While listing all of my published work for a new contract, I released how much that list has grown in the past few years. Perhaps my list is shorter than other authors’ lists, but it is significantly longer than the one I had three years ago.

This will be my third novel released – all of them dear to me, in different ways. This one stands alone, not part of a series, nothing to fall back on. Just pure sci-fi, no ghosts or bats or gothic themes. A true product of the ‘80’s influence: different in tone and theme and voice.

A Hat Trick is when you score three goals on the same game – and that’s what this release date feels like: the culmination of a lot of hard work, a significant event, something that should be celebrated.

The idea for The Harvesters came from a dream – actually a terrifying nightmare – that just wouldn’t fade once daylight invaded. Farmers’ fields being torn up by a giant machine, abandoning a home, frantic escape by car, making sure my loved ones were all accounted for…the struggle, the mad dash, the anguish of leaving things behind…

A compelling idea. Story-worthy.

The more I researched the genre, the more comments and articles I came across telling me my project wouldn’t work. Sci-fi wasn’t targeted for “women over 30”. The main character was a mom, trying to save everyone. Not daunted by those parameters, I plunged ahead anyways and wrote a few scenes.

When I tried to mold that dream into a story, it just wouldn’t work. It was dark, it was deadly, and it didn’t have a moment of victory. So I discarded the outline, quit working on the chapters I had written, and moved on.

A few years later (and a few books later), I was attending one of Brian Henry’s writing workshops intending to polish up my kids’ chapter book (The Persnickety Princess, released April 12 2016). I had an eureka moment! The Harvesters might work if I changed the point of view to the oldest sibling’s – a teenager. Armed with this new concept, I tackled the old outline and much to my surprise had a whole novel a few months later.

The book is all about things I know – the setting, the sports, the power struggles, injected with a hefty dash of sci-fi. The sunset at the lake, the wind turbines, the clash of sweaty kids on a football field, the dusty bookstore. Secrets and lies and the struggle to survive – all very human concepts. The realism grounds the fantasy.